Raspberry Pi

Another month and another update of Raspbmc the XBMC distribution for the Raspberry Pi. There are lots of updates in the November build and some of the most noticeable features include, USB sound card support, a web browser has been added, AirPlay is fixed with iOS 7 device and there is an updated Windows Media Center PVR addon. There are a lot of other updates and fixes in the build, more details and the download links on raspbmc.com

Details from raspbmc.com

popcornmix has now completely fixed SD card corruption issues that occur when overclocking. This is excellent and much needed progress.

He has also fixed a bug where having DDS fanart enabled crashes the Raspberry Pi.

Installs now use the new F2FS filesystem by default which offers better performance. I’m staying with the ext4 filesystem for USB drive installs though, as many users won’t be able to mount F2FS on their desktop and may wish to do so.

USB soundcard support is available again. Simply select ‘Enable external soundcards’ in Raspbmc Settings. Thanks to ‘stupid-boy’ for working on an OpenMAX ALSA sink. This is much better than the previous Pulse Audio approach we had, because the audio and video are in sync. Be aware that this is experimental though. As such, I’d like feedback in this thread here.

AirPlay streaming is fixed for iOS 7 devices. Be sure to reboot your iOS device though. I’d like to thank Memphiz for letting me know where the issue was which made it easier for me to detect and fix.

Raspbmc now has a web browser! This is available under the Programs option where Raspbmc Settings is located. Note that for now only wired network connections that support DHCP will work. I’m also aware HTTPS is broken and am looking in to that ā€” but it’s a good first attempt that showcases a browser is more than achievable on Pi. I’d like to thank Rob Bishop for his work on Arora, Karnage for developing the addon for XBMC and popcornmix for helping me work out what attributes ‘recovery.elf’ normally sets.

Speed improvements have been achieved via kernel backports and higher default overclock settings.

I’ve upgraded Windows Media Center PVR addon for Gotham and Frodo.

Fix for issue where WiFi cards disconnect after a period of time

Added support for IPV6 Privacy Options

Added support for LVM modules and RAID in the kernel (device mapper support)

Added IR to LIRC bridge support

Improve PPP support for users wishing to use VPN

Fix for a bug in XBMC 13 where the option to disable the 720p UI cap was not working

Fixed a message that would show above the splash screen

Add hotplugging to XBMC Frodo. This allows connection and disconnection of keyboards without having to restart XBMC

Fix incorrectly reported run time in the web interface.

Raspbmc no longer warns the user if /boot/config.txt does not match the settings addon.

Fix memory leak when playing multiple files from a playlist

24 hour nightly builds are resumed again

Added V4L2 Raspberry Pi camera support in the kernel

iptables logging in the kernel for users who would like debugging

I’ve reverted to the classic Confluence skin as our Raspbmc skin developer is no longer maintaining it. You can still select it under Skin settings, but it’s no longer the default skin

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